MLA Website Citations

• 1). Apply MLA style guidelines to a formal website/webpage citation listed in Works Cited.
  
  Provide the website's editor, compiler or author name, if available, using a last name first format, in the case of citations of a whole website. End this portion of the citation with a period. (Find the site author, if available, at the bottom of a site's pages or in the site map.) If no author's name is available, begin with the name of the webpage, article, or document title that you wish to cite, in quotation marks. When citing a specific webpage, article or document from a website (rather than the website itself), you would provide that webpage's author, if available, not that of the website's owner/author/editor.
  
  
• 2). Follow the author and/or the page/document title with the website's name (in italics), ending with a period. Then give the website's version number, revision date (if any), posting date, volume or issue numbers (for online magazines and journals), followed by a period. (The website's version number, if there is one, can often be found at the bottom of its home page.)
  
  
• 3). Medium of publication is next, followed by publication date. In the traditional case of a book, this would be a publisher and a date of publication. In your case, however, citing a website, it would look like this:
  
  Web. Date of publication. Date of access (when you viewed the document). URL (if required).
  
  
• 4). Write a complete MLA website citation for a website.
  
  If URL's are required, such a citation might look like this:
  
  "The Terror of Error." Working Texas Writer. Web. April 23, 2010. May 25, 2010. http://workingtexaswriter.com/333/the-terror-of-error
  
  
• 5). Apply MLA style guidelines to an in-text citation. Typically, MLA in-text citations follow the format: (First Author's Last Name, Page Number). Websites and webpages, however, seldom if ever have page numbers and often don't have known authors, either. The rule for MLA in-text citation in such cases is to use the (often shortened) first element that appears in the Works Cited reference. In this case, that would simply look like this:
  
  ("The Terror of Error")
  
  There's no author or page number, so just use the first element of the entry as listed in Works Cited for an MLA in-text citation.
  
  

APA Website Citations

• 1). Applying APA style to an informal citation of a website, it is OK to be in the form of simple running text. It can look like this:
  
  "...Working Texas Writer offers advice for freelance writers (http://www.workingtexaswriters.com)"
  
  The full URL of the website is placed in parentheses.
  
  
• 2). But you may use APA style guidelines more formally, too, to cite a webpage as an entry in a reference list or bibliography.
  
  
• 3). A complete APA website citation to be included in a Bibliography looks like this:
  
  The Terror of Error. (2010). Retrieved May 25, 2010 from http://workingtexaswriter.com/333/the-terror-of-error
  
  If we had an author, that element goes first, in this format:
  
  LastName, Firstname. (Date). Title. Retrieved Date from URL.
  
  (Note that the date, in parentheses, follows the author. The title follows the date. If there is no author, the title is the first element and the date, in parentheses, follows it.)
  
  If there's no publication date, write (n.d.) after the author, if there is one, or after the title if there isn't.
  
  
• 4). Typical APA in-text citations follow the format: (First Author's Last Name, Year Published), but as we saw, that information may not be available for a website/webpage citation.
  
  In this case, because we don't know the author, the element used for the in-text citation is the title of the document/webpage, in quotation marks. (This is shortened in the case of long titles.) This is followed by the document's publication year, when available. These two elements are placed in parentheses.
  
  In this case, your formal in-text citation in APA style would look like this:
  
  ("The Terror of Error," 2010)
  
  

Chicago Manual of Style Website Citations

• 1). In applying Chicago Manual of Style (CSoM) to a website citation, humanities style, you may informally allude to the website in running text, rather than as an in-text citation. For example, a running text citation might read, "...On its website, Working Texas Writer offers advice for freelance writers." Note that when a website is somewhat obliquely cited in this less formal manner, it is normally omitted from the bibliography or reference list, too.
  
  
• 2). You can make a more formal citation, however, as an endnote/footnote, in CSoM humanities style. Provide the document's author first, if available. If not, begin the citation with the document's title in quotation marks, ending with a comma, and then give the website's name, followed by another comma.
  
  
• 3). Then add the website's URL, followed by a period. If an access date is required by your publication or house style, add it in parentheses, after the URL and before the period. Following the Chicago Manual of Style Online example, a website citation given in humanities style as a note might look like this:
  
  "The Terror of Error," Working Texas Writer, http://workingtexaswriter.com/333/the-terror-of-error (accessed September 19, 2009).
  
  And as entered into the bibliography:
  
  "The Terror of Error." Working Texas Writer. http://workingtexaswriter.com/333/the-terror-of-error (accessed September 19, 2009)
  
  As you can see, the bibliography entry is identical to the note citation, except that periods replace commas.